By 2025, intimate wear category in India estimated to touch $8.5 billion: Khatija Lokhandwala of Zivame

The world likes to see women in a very particular body type and size and other shapes and sizes get ignored. Considering this, Zivame launched the Har Pal Ko Own Karo (Own every moment) campaign to highlight the lack of inclusivity.

The intimate wear brand wanted to showcase that a woman, regardless of her shape and size, deserves to feel recognised, cherished and appreciated every single day. The film, whose creative credits go to Leo Burnett, shows a curvy woman with absolute confidence and charm, despite what the world perceives her size to be, effortlessly navigating the world.

The ad film shows her in an art gallery where every single portrait is of a thin woman, and the narrative shifts to her apartment where the viewer is shown a bed size, exclusively for a particular body size in mind. The audience can also see the plus-sized woman in a gym, where she has got the confidence to flirt with a boy.

By 2025, the overall intimate wear category in India is estimated to be about $8.5 billion, out of which 45 percent will be in the organised sector and 55 percent will be in the unorganised sector.

Khatija Lokhandwala, Head of Brand Marketing at Zivame, says that the brand mission of Zivame is to remove every taboo around this category, desensitise this topic, and make the customer understand the emotional and functional role that intimate wear plays in their lives though every campaign.

Progress of intimate wear category

A few years back, there used to be a sense of embarrassment and shame attached to intimate wear but that mindset is changing. “Consumers are now understanding how important the fit of an intimate wear is and they are conscious about the right fit and taking steps to find out the right fit. Consumers have also realised the important role intimate wear plays in functional wear and emotional wear. Wearing a great piece of active wear can transform the way they look and appear; therefore, intimate wear is refreshed a lot more often,” shares Lokhandwala.

Women are moving away from boring and mundane lingerie and moving to active shape. There is now a trend to try out new colours, patterns and prints, as per occasion, seasonality and moods.

Category challenges

The endeavour of Zivame is to make the category simpler for consumers and to help them navigate this category by ensuring that a woman, irrespective of age, body type and life stage, is able to find the right intimate wear. “At Zivame, our intent is to penetrate Tier 2 and 3 markets, to ensure that consumers buying unbranded intimate wear from unorganised market shift to branded products by normalising conversations around this category in smaller towns,” says Lokhandwala.

Zivame is also using technology to help women find the right fit for themselves with Fitcode, which one can leverage from the privacy of their homes and quickly find out the right fit.

Post-pandemic revelations

According to Lokhandwala, post-pandemic, consumers are redefining channel preferences. Earlier, there were trust issues and lack of information, but now digital channels have made shopping an easy and seamless experience.

Also, categories like loungewear has taken off, post-COVID, with consumers giving priority to comfort. Active wear has also picked up as consumers realised the importance of health and wellness since the pandemic.

Marketing game

Zivame’s marketing initiatives appear to be multifaceted and nuanced. Zivame, whose online-offline ratio is 80:20, leads on the digital platform but the brand also invests in offline channels as well.

Recently, the brand did a big outdoor campaign across major cities, and used magazines effectively, thereby implying a good mix of online and offline marketing.

In the past, Zivame partnered with stand-up comedians, and used humour and quirk to market its products. “We learnt that when content is packaged in a humorous manner, it becomes more palatable for the audience,” says Lokhandwala.

Zivame also created Unhooked, a show which was about having a heart-to- heart conversation with eight women from multiple walks of life and showcasing the transformative power of intimate wear, with the right advice of Zivame’s intimate wear experts.

Given the sensitivities attached to this category, Zivame also indulges in influencer marketing and collaborates with both A-listed influencers as well as micro influencers. Lokhandwala explains that when a person you are looking up to is delivering a message, it helps to change the mindset and encourages conversations in this segment itself.